On Packaging Yoga

I was ejected summarily from some group called the Embodied Philosophy Forum for suggesting the following, so I thought it would be good to document my observations on the commercial packaging of Yoga.

It is the nature of Asuric civilizations that they systematize and package up goods for sale in a manner that is fit for propagation and mass consumption. It’s not for nothing that Church-goers are masters at propaganda-based marketing!

Nothing wrong per se in their quest to disseminate correctly interpreted knowledge, for example simplifying hard to understand esoteric teachings, except when it becomes a subversive tool for Mind Control like deliberately co-opting traditional narratives and substituting their own avatArs while erasing others.

One obvious example is in the field of Yoga where difficult to comprehend texts available only under the tutelage of advanced Gurus have now been neatly packaged into bite-sized chunks & systematic protocols for consumers keen on becoming adept Yogis or professional Yoga teachers.

After all Yoga is meant for all of humanity so it would be churlish to insist that only Hindus can propagate this knowledge. But how to prevent outright theft and furthermore the distancing from its roots?

Here are two suggestions:

1. Tithing: The commercial purveyor of such ancient treatises in modern form needs to monetarily compensate some established reputable institution in its Hindu homeland, e.g. in the case of Yoga literature a good candidate to support would be the Madras Sanskrit College. The Christian Church regularly insists on tithe-ing (garnishing 10% of your wages) from its flock, in similar vein such commercial purveyors should tithe back 10% (Dashaj in Sanskrit) of their revenues. 

2. The lineage of Masters/Gurus/Acharyas needs to be explicitly acknowledged and propagated. For example although Patanjali’s Sutras are interpreted by every Amar, Akbar, Anthony (Tom, Dick & Harry) with their own insights, the traditional scholars are first made to go through vyAsa’s bhAshya (commentary) on the Sutras before taking off on their own quest to create a siddhAntha (school of thought). 

Furthermore, the commercial packager could make their offerings available for translation into native languages (because their packaging is usually excellent) and of course the reverse tithing would then be but fair because packaging is indeed of value.